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I really love this game - but this article is pathetic. The title already made me angry. This games cries for an expansion or just the announcement of it. As much as I am always ready to make a huge list with all the good things in this game, I feel annoyed by these kind of mini-updates, that do not really add something new. Actually this would be the one and only negative quality of this game I would point at, if somebody would ask me about GW2.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

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My biggest issue is they rarely seem to improve the core gameplay. There are a lot of major issues and they aren't even addressing them. With trying to appease the content hungry folks out there they don't have the developer time necessary to really improve actual gameplay.

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Contrary to the posts above. I feel like this was one of the best articles ever written on the site.

It shows a clear understanding of the double edge sword Anet is wielding like Damocles.

It also is written in way that shows a personal relationship with the game and it mirrors my feelings to a T.

[mod edit]

Anyways,

I was mercilessly addicted to GW2 when it came out, I like spent more time in WvW those first few months than I did remembering I was living on a planet called Earth.

I did my dailies right away most days and never missed a monthly. The thought of missing one was appalling to me.

Then the realization I was addicted hit me and I quit for a few weeks. OH WOW! OMG! What 3-4 weeks can change in that game?

All of a sudden there are ascended items, and people bitterly waring on either side of the opinion fence about their impact short and long term on the game. WvW was in tatters as the big server guilds were all back stabbing each other and defecting from server to server like rats on sinking ships. There was bitterness and distrust everywhere, so people started grinding the new content that kept rolling out to get cooler and cooler looking gear and more and more powerful gear.

I found when I came back that unless I was dedicated and made it a job to log in with all my alts for the guild bonus, and do my dailies, then I was falling behind. Not in skill, or ability to play, but in the little things, like cool back pieces, and hordes of currency to make the game easier.

Not to mention that my friends were transferring servers and the gold conversion to gems is now insane. To the point where I decided to get more bank and character slots rather than chase a tail I can't keep up with.

I am a completionist so it really irks me that the content is limited time only, I don't mind that for holidays but else wise it's painful to see gaps in my achievement records, and ones that are simply impossible to get because I wasn't there at the time.

Anet is doing it correctly. The problem is exactly as stated in the article. We love when we make lasting changes to the game world. We're not so thrilled when others do it. It comes down to the maturity of the community and who Anet wants to serve.

No one freaks out in EVE when players who are not you change the course of the game's history, economy or politics. However, high-fantasy fans seem rather immature and self indignant. Perhaps if the community wasn't full of QQers then this issue would be moot and Anet would slow its pace down and release more streamlined updates and changes.

Because all in all, every system change they have made to GW2 has been a positive one. Better inventory management when it already had the best system out there. Better UI for your achievements, more diverse achievements, More stuff for guilds to do, better Team PvP, and customizations.

They've done a lot correct, it's just that they need to remember that you should still be able to play the game a few hours or less a week and still feel part of the game, and not that you're so far behind the vertical content schedule.

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First, GW2 didn't see a sharp decline in player interest, which then led to Living Story. The game was going incredibly strong UNTIL Living Story, after which the numbers started to plummet.

Second, "careful what we wish for"? Sorry, but I don't know anyone that wished for Living Story and it's slew of fluff, adventure by checklist, temporary content. What many of us wished for was for the game to build on it's incredible core strengths, by continually adding to and evolving Dynamic Event content across the game world!

The game hasn't floundered because they gave us what we thought we wanted. It is floundering because Arenanet 2013 apparently has no clue what made the core game such a success and decided to go off on the failed tangent which was Living Story. No one asked for that massive waste of development resources. No one!

It's become clear that Arenanet lost a lot of key people after launch, likely due to poor compensation following the production of one of the best at-launch MMOs the genre has ever seen. They also apparently retained some vets not via deserved raises, but by promoting to management positions they just are not suited for. Arenanet 2013 is not pre-release Arenanet, not by a mile.

Design wise, it all comes back to Dynamic Events and Arenanet's abandonment of the game world. During development, one developer in an interview boasted how efficient their Dynamic Event creation tools were and how they would leverage that efficiency into an aggressive update schedule after launch. Well, apparently, that developer must be one of the ones the studio lost, because after launch suddenly Dynamic Events went from "Easy to produce" to, "Oh, those are too hard". Colin's tease that we could see the number of DEs double or triple in the first year evaporated and even many broken DEs across the game world went unfixed for ages.

Apparently, lack of ability to produce Dynamic Event content, likely related to a loss of key talent, led to a new strategy. Living Story.

Pretty early on in Living Story, I called them out as fluff, smoke and mirrors updates, meant to try to provide an illusion of substance out of what was not really much content at all. I think that early judgement has been vindicated. Living Story was just one big magic act meant to make a lot of nothing seem like a lot of something. Unfortunately, it was never a very convincing trick and the result is that Arenanet, via the Living Story fiasco, has squandered away much of the game's massive potential.

2013 Arenanet has basically just been spinning it's wheels with content creation busy work that has done nothing to build on the incredible potential this game possessed at launch. In fact, the nature of this "content" has been so counter to the core game that it has turned off many fans who loved the game at launch and couldn't wait to see where it would go next.

I find it unbelievable that the author would try to shift any of the blame onto the fans for "asking for something that didn't actually make us happy". Living Story is all Arenanet 2013. The fans didn't want it. It was a complete reversal on many of the core design concepts that made the game great. It has clearly driven more and more players from the game with every update. Yet, they stuck to it in a downward spiral of self delusion, self denial and self destruction.

But, hey, it's the most updated MMO in the world, that must mean something, right? Right?

Sorry for the bullet points and indents, trying to make it readable, as the line breaks seem to be being stripped by the editior.

+10

Yeah he definitely hit the nail on the head. Players wanted an evolving world. Not this terrible living story. Such wasted potential. Here are the updates that I personally wanted:

Updated dynamic events so that the zones didn't go through a one hour DE rotation and so the world felt like there was actually some consequence to failing events.

More zones, with world events to open up the path down south to Elona and Cantha. Southshore would have been great if there was actually a point for it to exist, and now it got turned into some novelty resort with killer crabs.

New skills. Especially a few choices for each weapon, which is the weakest part of the game. Even an augmentation type system like TSW has would be good.

New classes.

I don't know anyone who wanted a force fed childish narrative. If you check my post history I was an ardent supporter of GW2, and loved the original GW and all its expansions, but GW2 just turned into a wasted opportunity.

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24 updates since this games inception including the holiday events and repeated events. Can you really count those as updates? Really?

This article is overall stupid and for the most part leaving me speechless as to how ignorant and blind the writer is. What happened to someone doing research before they accidentally spout false information?

Probably the same thing that happened to actually reading an article before commenting on it. If you bothered to read it, the whole thing was criticising the lack of significant content addition.

I've actually read the entire article and still stand by what I've said. There's more than just the Guild Wars information that's easily able to be pointed out as to the misinformation that the writer has written.

I doubt that you did read it, and you are now trying to save face by being defiant. Speaking of misinformation, so far GW2 has only had one repeated holiday event - Halloween. And Halloween changed significantly this year. Wintersday will be the next, but its not out yet. So yeah, they count as updates. They just aren't what the players wanted, which was the point of the article if you had actually bothered to read it.

What did the writer say that was false information? I would love for you to point it out for us.

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Originally posted by rodingo

Originally posted by kyssarigot the title a little bit off, should read "Guild Wars 2: The game with the most temporary one time events!" Some of the stuff is kinda fun but the fact that almost none of them have any permanent content updates to the game at all kinda ruins it all for me :\

I think the title should read "Anet: Damned if they do, damned if they don't."

Based on the number of people responding entirely to the column title instead of the written content, it should be called:

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Originally posted by KhinRuniteRegardless, it's still the most frequently updated. You guys just don't share the same vision with ANet about moving content. This is their idea of a living world.

I get their whole idea of a living world and such but it doesn't really feel living when so many of these major events have no permanent effect on the world at all is all I'm saying, they simply happen and within a few weeks are over, gone, and completely forgotten :\

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Originally posted by Destai

Originally posted by TekaelonAs stated many times I am NOT GW2 hater! The game has a variety of innovations that no other game has come close to. That said, the living story drove me from the game. Although I was able to play most of the content the meaningless story and monotonous grind for an ever growing collection of armor/weapon skins to much to bare. Every release of new content replaced the idea of being in a world with the impression of playing an arcade game. It just felt like my character was not progressing.

Besides its combat, what's innovative about it? It hasn't revolutionized any gaming system. Where once a zone had hundred of quests, GW2 tells MMO players and developers you just need events. Where once you had factions and reputations, you have 3 guilds that cease mattering once you've completed the main story. Where once you had large updates with new raids and dungeons, you have a two week cycle where we get new signs to fix.

They haven't revolutionized questing, grouping, raiding, character development, roleplaying, or even their own damn story.

Yea a lot of the core mechanics they put into the game really just took away what could be added as future content.

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Originally posted by TripChargeI feel like I'm the only player who actually likes the bi-weekly updates. Oh no.

Far from being alone. I love the bi-weekly updates and the content that has been released has been AMAZING. People forget that the living story team is a small fraction of the overall Dev team. Major content is still being created behind the scenes and will release when ready. The bi-weekly living story has nothing to do with those updates. The living story started off rocky but has turned into something truly stunning. I would be sad if they did away with the living story updates.

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Originally posted by KhinRuniteRegardless, it's still the most frequently updated. You guys just don't share the same vision with ANet about moving content. This is their idea of a living world.

I get their whole idea of a living world and such but it doesn't really feel living when so many of these major events have no permanent effect on the world at all is all I'm saying, they simply happen and within a few weeks are over, gone, and completely forgotten :\

They're moving in this direction. Also, I can give examples of this legacy some events leave behind.

The Lost Shores update left behind a new zone.

After Flame & Frost there's an instanced area in the Shiverpeaks region (forgot w/c zone exactly) where you can enter and talk to NPCs and they will tell you their accounts of what happened there.

Secret of the Southsun is a retooling of the new zone they introduced prior. Same with Last Stand at Southsun.

For Dragon Bash, I have no idea what it left behind. I missed that event. Same with Bazaar of Four Winds.

I'm excluding holiday updates here. I never expect them to leave behind anything.

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My problem with this living story thing is that when you play in a casual way, with some weeks/months break each times, you totaly miss it.Why should i care if there was a pirate events 3 months ago when i wasn't playing ?I want fishing or guild house and way more emotes or new profession or new races or extra skill for my engineer etc. !

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Man the pointless complaints. The content is not necessary for you to continue in the game, but you are rewarded in some fashion if you put the effort in. You are in no way made to do that content if you do not desire to.

Things like jump puzzles are frustration but something challenging and fun to do and the sense of accomplishment when you finish it. Those that quit over something like that, I feel are just lazy people. The living story, sure for casual players you feel like you have to be on or miss out, that's true it's sometimes catered to hard-core players. Though you can still enjoy in some way, actually stop and look at the whole picture not just the beginning.

Glad doctors don't give up on patients because they don't want to continue the operation because they find out there's going to be something added that they don't like to do, to complete the operation.

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A big MMO needs two things to survive. A large casual base and a small but competive hardcore base. Despite the few comments of people on this thread who are so casual they can't finish maybe 5 hours of content in a month living story satisfies a large number of the casual fans, but you need a hard core competive leadership in your games to drive the casual fans in WvW SPvP and end game content, but guild wars does not offer anything to that group in their updates so they simply left.

They started with a very competitive GW1 fan base but they lost alot of that because of the holes that they created moving away from key GW1 systems. First off their skill system offers nothng to hardcore fans. There really is very little customize choice or character progress in GW2. Once you unlock all your weapon skills in the first 5 levels you have done 90% of your progression.

This game could be fixed very simply. One make WvW forts easier to hold or harder to take, this will mean more coordination than a zerg is required and strategy guilds will emerge to seriously take and defend forts. Two make there be more than 5 weapon skills and have you pick 5, doesn't have to be alot just 7-10 total so there is some variety. Three make truly offensive slot skills. Give people real viable offensive abilities on longer cds. Right now they have less viable supplemental things like an extra burn for eles, rather than having a meteor with a 60 second cd on the slot bar, I am a magician and my weapon is the only source of my magic? Four rather than doing living story every week promise a full story expansion like GW1 did almost every year, people will stick around and you'll get paid more because everyone will buy the 50 dollar expansion like they did with gw1. You don't even have to increase level cap you can just release more skills or classes like you did in GW1.

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What's with this "no one is playing" crap? The game's just as if not more populated than it has been in a long time. There are queues for WvW, Lion's Arch is constantly hopping, I see people in most any zone I visit, the Living Story content always draws swarms of players (regardless of the local trolls claims), they're actually in an enviable position for an MMO right now.

Then you have these ridiculous whines about temporary content, like is some great evil. Well, let's take a realistic look at that, shall we? How many expansions has WoW had where they've added permanent content. (All of them, right?) New raids, new dungeons, lots of stuff, yes? When was the last time you saw someone raiding in the old content? Aside from the rare nostalgia tour it's dead, wasted content these days. Hooray, it's permanent, yet it might as well not even be there. Now let's compare that to GW2 and the temporary content. Halloween has come and gone, and people were packing into the content just like they did last year. Why? It was a change, it was "fresh" once again instead of stale, old stuff that sits there forever unused. The Clock Tower once again drew masses of people. The mini-zone constantly had swarms of people, just like last year. Had that been permanent, always there, do you really think people would have gone back after all this time?

Before you whine about permanent content vs temporary, go take a look at the old, cobweb filled permanent content from other games that is sitting there dead and idle. You really think that's better?